Friction

by Joe Stretch

  So I became a historian. I began tirelessly researching the world I had almost known. I would have liked to have gone farther back and learnt more about the twentieth-century wars, but with the rise of this petty Authority so much was repressed: history, the Internet, almost all the blessed porno. I am, how did they put it? Absolutely gutted.

  The current Authority governs under the name ‘Future Love’. Its roots lie in the Antiporn movement and in the public horror provoked by ‘unseen lives’ and ‘sex deaths’. I realise now that they keep the information on Evernet as a warning, as an example of the vile affairs that Future Love replaced. Why else would so much information on turn-of-the-century society exist? It’s virtually all you can find on the Evernet system: documents relating to that civilisation and its people. They left so much information behind, stacks of it. The fashions, the media, the maps, the curricula, restaurant menus, sporting statistics, government documents, the endless blogs. I pored over everything. I’m fascinated by that period. Desperate to consume its colours and its freakish nosedives.

  And my dear parents, such icons of that lost world, sometimes I feel so incredibly proud of them. Of myself, too; a real pride. You see, I feature as a kind of martyr in some of the founding texts of Future Love. I am the poor child that narrowly survived the reckless and sick attempts on his life. But sadly, they tell lies about my later life. They say that I work for the Authority and that I live with a wife and children in a place called Wolverhampton. But I suppose I’m cheerful anyway, simply to be associated with that strange old world.

  I think about my father most of all. Justin was arrested shortly after my mother’s death and put on trial. There was enormous press coverage. I’ve seen so many pictures of him being bundled into cars or booed by large crowds of Antiporn protesters. He’s a real hero. And innocent, too. He’d done nothing wrong and he got let off. He’d never have got off nowadays, they’d have thrown him in here for just a whiff of sexual misdemeanour. But the government was keen to make it clear he’d done little wrong. I admire his innocence. Although, at times, I wish they’d found him guilty and that he’d become a real cornerstone of all this Future Love idiocy. But it wasn’t to be. That honour was given to Colin.

  My bowels are cramping again, I think it’s this chair, this dreadful hard pine. I’m sure they’ll be turning my light off soon. They do it without warning but I’ve developed a strange ability to predict when it will happen. I’ll be typing away when, suddenly, I’ll get a weird, vulnerable feeling. I’ll stop and look up. Then be buried in pitch black.

  In any case, I’ve said too much. These kind of bumbling descriptions won’t win your approval, will they, Susan? But perhaps you understand me now? Ha, that’s a joke. But maybe you get it, that I’m making a stand? That sounds funny – making a stand. Like some old-fashioned rebel. But my story is the truth, near enough at least. That should be in my favour. Let me out of here, I’m ready, let me out!

  Wait – I feel vulnerable, here it comes, then –

  This morning, I returned from the lavatory to find Susan leaning on my desk, flicking through some notes I’ve been making. She isn’t pleased with me. Her forehead was lightly coated in a small frown, her eyes were desperately trying to appear piercing. So I smiled, and apologised for the naughty things I’ve been saying about her lately. And yes, as you can imagine, it was a little awkward. She stood in a variety of absurd postures, attempting, in vain, to hide the precise geography of her body from me. But, Susan, honestly, it needn’t have been so tense. You could have relaxed, laughed perhaps. We could have reclined on my thin bed together. We could have smooched and giggled about these stupid lives we’re leading.

  Susan tells me that Gordon certainly won’t release me. No shit, I remarked. Then I told her that my face wasn’t listening. Old world slang. Whatever else I might be, nowadays I’m so cool.

  I’m the son of gods. I should never have been allowed to find out. If you let me out now, I’ll just start blurting my mouth off wherever I can, and, if your hilarious logic is to be followed, then I’d probably start raping women. No, I confess, I have no hope of release.

  Susan wants me to write about my innermost feelings. The mistake she makes is glaring. I don’t have any innermost feelings. For twenty years I wandered contentedly between the rooms of this bright hell, unaware as to the precise nature of my suffering. Yes, at times, I grew strangely weary, but I shrugged it off, not knowing how to comprehend what I now recognise as melancholy.

  My mind is rooted firmly in my origins, my eyes averted from the future and fixed on my past. A past I know only through the medium of a computer screen. But there seems to me to be an honour in completion, in finishing the story that I suspect will be my last. I was fond of my characters, of Carly and Steve, Johnny, Colin and the others, my parents. I’m nervous to ask, but did you like it? The story, I mean. No, actually, stop, don’t answer that.

  I’ll finish. Some truth at last. Jesus, I’m biting my lip so hard it’s bleeding.

  According to the testimony of the paramedics, Justin was loitering outside when the ambulance arrived at the house in Withington. Apparently he seemed nervous, jumpy, pacing the pavement as if he might flee at any moment. But he went with the paramedics to the bathroom. Crucially, for the spiny whiners who cheese out judgements on people’s characters, Justin offered no help to the medics. He was asked to identify the young man who was barking blood from his arse and the dying fish of a girl, who was flinching around in her own guts. But Justin just shook his head. He claimed not to know either of them. And, instead of helping with the body lifting, he just turned and walked away.

  Dear, dear Father, don’t think I begrudge you this decision. But I do wonder where you went. I like to think you went to a pub, to a quiet and old-fashioned affair off the beaten path. I picture you sitting at the bar on a high stool, leaning on to polished mahogany, chatting idly to the elderly punters. And then, of course, you drink too much. So much so, Justin, that you violently resist the landlord’s attempts to get you out at closing time. I picture you spilling on to the streets with tears in your eyes, just because you’re drunk and not because you care.

  But at his trial, Justin had no idea why he’d not identified either victim or where he’d gone to after he left the house. He stood in the dock with a face that was devoid of emotion. I like to imagine the skin of his face growing quickly and enveloping his eyes, creeping over the angles of his nose and sealing his mouth. I like to imagine him with no features whatsoever, completely illegible, just a thick slab of skin stretched across his face.

  Colin survived the attempt made on his life by Rebecca. It seems she overestimated the strength of the rat poison. It harmed him, of course, but because he had vomited up so much of it at an early stage, doctors were able to bring him round. If my mother was the martyr and my father the fool, then Colin was the Devil in the eyes of the public. Once he was fit enough to face charges the legal and media establishments really went to work on him. Austere black and white prints of his face were featured on the front page of all the major newspapers. For a man whose only real crime was two counts of attempted murder (I count myself, though the courts didn’t), he faced an extreme amount of national hate.

  After the disappointment of Justin as a hate figure, with Colin they really felt they’d found what they’d been looking for. An icon around whom they could organise, repent and end their wicked ways.

  These were the origins of Future Love, the laughing bundle of sexual repression that waltzes law through parliament as I write. Antiporn provided its fanatics, but Colin’s story brought support from across the nation. People who read of his playful desire to kill the unborn were appalled. Liberals winced then smirked, amazed that the erotic apparatus they’d invited people to lose themselves in was finally being rejected. But I suppose I’ll never know the whole truth. I offer you only my skinny little theories, so be gentle with them. Maybe things just fall into place or get out of hand. The twitching casualty of
history rolls on to its back, creating a progress of sorts.

  From what I’ve seen, it’s laughable that anyone ever tries to make sense of anything in the outside world. There’s always some smirking alternative making fun of your theories. A minxy demon holding a mirror to your self and your thoughts, showing them to mean nothing at all.

  So as Antiporn and Future Love held hands and attempted to swoop over all the two-legged totterers of England, the number of recreational abortions soared. It’s true. As millions opposed it, millions couldn’t resist trying it. There’s too many of you, that’s your problem. That and your appalling self-delusions. You can’t agree on anything.

  I’ve read so many accounts of dumpy young couples from Dorset spicing up their stewed love with acts of destruction, by aborting the sloppy mess of life they’d humped into being. The age of the tit-bra had ended. Sex had escaped from the magazine racks and made for the abortion clinics. Pregnancy and abortion became fashion. Became fun. Money was made. Bodies ruined. I suppose it had to be stopped.

  Colin, I guess, still resides in the wing adjacent to my own. I think of him from time to time. I wonder if he’s on creative therapy, too. I have been unable to trace his file on Evernet. His, more so than any other, had to remain secret, I suppose. But I’d love to read his stories. I’m rather jealous of the quality of filth he must surely possess. Or perhaps he’s sick of his poisoned instincts and scrapes together tales of innocence from the dry rotted basement of his brain. Yes, I can imagine that. Tales of picnics and parlour games. I’ll never know.

  I was unable to find any record of Justin’s activity; his trail fades shortly after he was found innocent. Rumour takes him to Moscow where I’ve heard it’s very cold. I hope this is true. I like to picture my father surrounded by snow and wrapped in long jackets of thick tweed. He’d be OK in a land of ice.

  The funny story is Johnny’s. Ah, Johnny, you thought I’d forgotten about him, didn’t you? Johnny Simkins, whose handwritten diary of sexual turmoil is easily located on Evernet, becomes the redeemed hero of this tittle-tattle Authority. He resurfaces at a General Election. He’s elected in Rochdale East and becomes part of Future Love’s inaugural government: Minister for Sport. He was eager to publicise his troubled origins, made a real show of the perversity of his youth: the prostitutes and the phone sex. This approach was seen as fresh politics, or so it seems. The Future Love party loved him for his gaping soul. Can you believe that? Perhaps not. Too farfetched? Oh, but do believe, it’s healthy and, of course, it’s true. Good old truth. Johnny was a friend of Rebecca’s. He seemed to have loved her very much. Rebecca was never a stripper, though. I don’t know where she met Justin either. Forgive me for all the lies.

  Oh, finish this, you fool. The lower lids of my eyes are quivering. They do this when I feel a sense of loss. My bed is luring me. I’m getting that feeling, that hunger for the dark shuffle. But you don’t need to know that. I know what you need to know. ‘From the heart, Theo, from the heart.’ I’ll save that for the morning. I’ll save the story of Sex Death, too. That’s a tale for tomorrow. I need to get under those sheets, clear my throat of this nagging desire. Turn the lights out, you perverts, turn out the lights.

  People wanted to defend Western sex against the frigids from the East. Am I right? Susan? As if you’d know, your brain is flatbread. But anyway, allow me to theorise. The baby-killing recalled in people their worst fear, that, deep down, we are a disobedient flock in whose minds sex whizzes so freely we must certainly be destined for a dimly lit and erotic annihilation. In contrast, the White Love 1000 was a timely reminder to Western society of its achievements.

  Back then, people enjoyed lifestyle. Enjoyed lattes, bruschetta, holidays and cash. They enjoyed preparing personalities and then releasing these gassy concoctions publicly and seeing how they reacted with those of others. So it was that the windows of pubs, cafés and restaurants were forever steamed up with love, hate, hobbies and quirks. Whether babies were being killed for fun or not, many people were reluctant to give up on all the identity, catchphrases and anecdotes that freedom’s rule had given them. And the White Love 1000 seemed the perfect answer to all the abortions. For some, at least, it seemed controlled, clean and somehow moral. Sex was already taking a beating from sections of Islam. All the extremism. The bombing, beardy bullshit. As worrying as recreational abortion was, many still hoped to save complex sex and lifestyle for themselves.

  So journalists began representing the White Love 1000 as an icon of our great culture. A talisman around which to reorganise and move on. A way of showing just how liberated and daring the way of the West was. Sex as a perfectly blissful piece of machinery and economy. In an effort to goad the fanatics and break Britain’s swelling waves of conservatism, the machine was offered as a piece of cultural artillery. It was closely attached to female freedom, to male tolerance, to a kind of time-cranking perfection of life.

  I wish I could be more clear. I wish I could draw neater lines from A to B, from year to year. Although perhaps my point is a simple one and concerns the general disarray that people inhabit. Perhaps this is the conclusion to my studies: that there is too much to and fro in the world of events and trends, too much criss-crossing and contradiction. So it is that dead foetuses share the front page with adverts for fuck machines. My point is simple and concerns the end of the world: you won’t see it coming. It will be extremely untidy. It will be unclear. Because of humans and their collective indecision.

  Frank Jacobs, who did exist but to my knowledge never met my parents, his meeting Justin is another lie, was delighted. As expected, the sales of the White Love 1000 were great indeed. All his projected profits had to be torn up when it became clear that men were buying the machine, as well as women. Yes, men were quick to fasten its pleasure pads to their anuses, nipples and, eventually and mistakenly, to the tips of their inquisitive dicks. It helped that the product was so brilliantly domestic. We’re talking about a time of war after all, when people were scared. The White Love 1000 seemed to commentators to be the ideal form of freedom and fun for those times. The solution to a boring blitz mentality that was widespread. A way of maintaining the tradition of dizzying fun while people trembled and awaited the loud bang.

  But, of course, I wouldn’t be here now if this hilarious emancipation had taken place. If we’d won the war of conflicting funs. That, Susan, is why this story is important to me. Why I fret and moan when you tell me to write from the heart and that you know all this. Just marry me, Susan, untie your hair and strip off. Get me out of here and marry me. Ha. Oh, just let me continue, there’s an honour in it and blah blah blah . . .

  It’s true that a girl named Carly Keen was the first registered Sex Death. They found her because of the smell: a nostril-stripping stench of burnt skin, sour blood and rotting insides. The neighbours were bound to complain. It’s also true that they found Carly’s lover suicided in the living room, naked and surrounded by shopping bags. But I’ve been unable to find out why or what his story was.

  The medical establishment had seen the fatalities coming. Frank had too; he escaped to Bangkok with the first flex of profit. But the government was slow off the mark. It was in disarray. And who listens to doctors when there’s fun to be had?

  There are numerous accounts of the smell on Evernet. The smell of Sex Death as it came to be known. But it wasn’t really sex at all. It was the scent of people electrocuting themselves in the name of repetitive fun, white love, a constant enjoyment, utopia. They say that before the penny dropped, entire areas reeked.

  On days such as this, when I can’t bear the brightness of this place any longer, I often think about the sex machine. I fancy a crack on one. I reckon it’d be a fitting end for me, a way of compensating for the scarcely detectable life I’ve led. I think about raping Susan, too. But they wouldn’t execute me for it and I doubt I could live with the shame. I’m a nice sort, deep down, I know this to be true. And I seem destined to survive, to just write. A virgin. Oh,
it makes me snort. I shouldn’t be embarrassed but I am. My cheeks go red. My fingers shake. Are there any more loose ends?

  The Sex Death crisis snapped the existing government and paved the way for the Future Love regime. A crimson-coloured class lost its nerve, realised the problems freedom had caused at the more innocuous levels of society. When the news of the thousands of Sex Deaths came through it was clear that something was finished: an era, or perhaps something less significant. A style of life. It was clear that human instincts had been damaged. There was a comical amnesty to try and collect and destroy the existing sex machines, but customers tended to keep their purchases. Reports of Sex Deaths continued to filter through until quite recently.

  Humans adore understanding. They’ve been at it for centuries. Thinking this way and that. Structure, no structure, God, freedom, language. They’d continued to think beyond the advent of exchange and the opening of the market, when perhaps they ought to have just given up. But, in the end, they were just damaged. Desires burned too fiercely. Some common courtesies remained intact, but the breed seems finished. Confused and chilled out. Ready for a colourless and awkward crackdown.

  So these were my origins and this is beginning to sound like the end. Thank you. As for the outside world nowadays, I couldn’t tell you. I’m sure it’s some fruity cocktail of embossed appearance and secret shit. But don’t take my word for anything. One thing that strikes me about creatures on the outside is the amount they leave behind. It’s too much. If you could only see the size of your archive. The unclaimed baggage of loose lives. The slimy trail that sludges behind you. You give too much away and it doesn’t make the historian’s task any easier. You’re neither coming nor going. You’ll never make sense.

  I’m getting angry and my mouth’s dry. In a moment of daring Susan recently suggested I write about my own sexual frustrations. The woman clearly has no critical faculties, just a snail’s-shell head and a grey brain. But I suppose she has a point. I’ve never really touched another person, just read your pious accounts of the sensation. There’s no end to your mutual regard, is there? Your caresses. Embraces. The running of fingers down silk cheeks. The wiping of tears. Your comforting, ah, it makes my eyes gurgle. But it’s jealousy, jealousy, I’m sure. My torso was never removed from its packaging. My thighs seem transparent in the absence of a woman’s touch; neither my mother’s nor that of any old whore. My cock’s an appalling source of shame; a fleshy civilisation, gift-wrapped, then lost.